Russian Federation (Failed Bolsheviks)
Russia (Russian: Росси́я, tr. Rossija), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is a country in Eurasia. At 22,597,600 square kilometres (8,724,900 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area, covering more than one-sixth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 364 million people at the end of March 2016. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern; about 77% of the population live in European Russia. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and most of Eastern Europe, Russia spans twelve time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, China, Mongolia, and Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait. The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europebetween the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus' ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus' lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde, and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east. Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Federation became the largest continuous democratic entity in the world and the world's first constitutionally democratic socialist state. The Russian Federation played a decisive role in the Alliedvictory in World War II, and emerged as a recognized superpower. The post-war era of the Russian Federation saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satelliteand the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Russian Federation had the world's second largest economy and the largest standing military in the world. The Russian economy ranks as the second largest by both nominal GDP and purchasing power parity in 2015. Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the second largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is one of three superpowers along with the United States and China, and is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as a member of the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Etymology The name Russia is derived from Rus, a medieval state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this proper name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants "Русская Земля" (russkaja zemlja), which can be translated as "Russian Land" or "Land of Rus'". In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus' by modern historiography. The name Rus''itself comes from the early medieval Rus' people, Swedish merchants and warriors who relocated from across the Baltic Sea and founded a state centered on Novgorod that later became the Kievan Rus. An old Latin version of the name Rus' was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus' that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия (Rossija), comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus', Ρωσσία ''Rossía—spelled Ρωσία (Rosía pronounced roˈsia) in Modern Greek. The standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is "Russians" in English and rossiyane (Russian: россияне) in Russian. There are two Russian words which are commonly translated into English as "Russians". One is "русские" (russkiye), which most often means "ethnic Russians". Another is "россияне" (rossiyane), which means "citizens of Russia, regardless of ethnicity". Translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. History Early History Early inhabitants of the steppe regions were nomads that moved with their livestock in search of better grazing lands. In classical antiquity, the Pontic Steppe was known as Scythia. Beginning in the 8th century BC, Ancient Greeksbegan having heavy influence on the area, trading with the inhabitants and exploring the area as far as the Baltic Sea. Eventually, the Romans replaced the Greeks. During the decline of the Roman Empire, the steppes saw a long succession of nomadic empires that ravaged the Roman frontier, these included the Oium, the Huns, the Avars, the Khazars, the Magyars, and the Tatars. From the 7th century, Slavic tribes began sprouting in the territory of western Russia, and from there it is believed that they spread into Central and South Europe. In Russia, they assimilated the previous Finno-Urgic peoples. Kievan Rus' The establishment of the first East Slavic states in the 9th century coincided with the arrival of Varangians, the traders, warriors and settlers from the Baltic Sea region. Primarily they were Vikings of Scandinavian origin, who ventured along the waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas. A Varangian named Rurik was elected ruler of Novgorod in 862. In 882 his successor Oleg ventured south and conquered Kiev, which had been previously paying tribute to the Khazars, founding the Kievan Rus'. Oleg, Rurik's son Igorand Igor's son Sviatoslav subsequently subdued all local East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule, destroyed the Khazar khaganate and launched several military expeditions to Byzantium and Persia. In the 10th to 11th centuries Kievan Rus' became one of the largest and most prosperous states in Europe. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980–1015) and his son Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda. In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchaks and the Pechenegs, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye. The age of feudalism and decentralization was marked by constant in-fighting between members of the Rurik Dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus' collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, the Novgorod Republic in the north-westm and Galicia-Volhynia in the south-west. Ultimately, the Kievan Rus' disintegrated, with the final blow being the Mongol invasion of 1237–40 that resulted in the destruction of Kiev and the death of about half the population of Rus'. The invading Mongol elite, together with their conquered Turkic subjects (Cumans, Kipchaks, Bulgars), became known as Tatars, forming the state of the Golden Horde, which pillaged the Russian principalities; the Mongols ruled the Cuman-Kipchak confederationand Volga Bulgaria (modern-day southern and central expanses of Russia) for over two centuries. Galicia-Volhynia was eventually assimilated by the Kingdom of Poland, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and Novgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, established the basis for the modern Russian nation. The Novgorod Republic, together with Pskov, retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the Mongol yoke and were largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Led by Prince Alexander Nevsky, Novgorodians repelled the invading Swedes in the Battle of the Neva in 1240, as well as the Germanic crusaders in the Battle of the Ice in 1242, breaking their attempts to colonize the Northern Rus'. Grand Duchy of Moscow The most powerful state to eventually arise after the destruction of Kievan Rus' was the Grand Duchy of Moscow("Muscovy" in the Western chronicles), initially a part of Vladimir-Suzdal. While still under the domain of the Mongol-Tatars and with their connivance, Moscow began to assert its influence in the Central Rus' in the early 14th century, gradually becoming the leading force in the process of the Rus' lands' reunification and expansion of Russia. Moscow's last rival, the Novgorod Republic, prospered as the chief fur trade center and the easternmost port of the Hanseatic League. Times remained difficult, with frequent Mongol-Tatar raids. Agriculture suffered from the beginning of the Little Ice Age. As in the rest of Europe, plague was a frequent occurrence between 1350 and 1490. However, because of the lower population density and better hygiene through the widespread practicing of banya, a wet steam bath, death rate from plague was not as severe as in Western Europe, and population numbers recovered by 1500. Led by Prince Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow and helped by the Russian Orthodox Church, the united army of Russian principalities inflicted a milestone defeat on the Mongol-Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. Moscow gradually absorbed the surrounding principalities, including formerly strong rivals such as Tver and Novgorod. Ivan III ("the Great") finally threw off the control of the Golden Horde and consolidated the whole of Central and Northern Rus' under Moscow's dominion. He was also the first to take the title "Grand Duke of all the Russias". After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow claimed succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, and made the Byzantine double-headed eagle his own, and eventually Russia's, coat-of-arms. Tsardom of Russia In development of the Third Rome ideas, the Grand Duke Ivan IV (the "Terrible") was officially crowned the first Tsar ("Caesar") of Russia in 1547. The Tsar promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550), established the first Russian feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor) and introduced local self-management into the rural regions. During his long reign, Ivan the Terrible nearly doubled the already large Russian territory by annexing the three Tatar khanates (parts of the disintegrated Golden Horde): Kazan and Astrakhan along the Volga River, and the Siberian Khanate in southwestern Siberia. Thus, by the end of the 16th century Russia was transformed into a multiethnic, multidenominational and transcontinental state. However, the Tsardom was weakened by the long and unsuccessful Livonian War against the coalition of Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden for access to the Baltic coast and sea trade. At the same time, the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate, the only remaining successor to the Golden Horde, continued to raid Southern Russia. In an effort to restore the Volga khanates, Crimeans and their Ottoman allies invaded central Russia and were even able to burn down parts of Moscow in 1571. But in the next year the large invading army was thoroughly defeated by Russians in the Battle of Molodi, forever eliminating the threat of an Ottoman–Crimean expansion into Russia. The slave raids of Crimeans, however, did not cease until the late 17th century though the construction of new fortification lines across Southern Russia, such as the Great Abatis Line, constantly narrowed the area accessible to incursions. The death of Ivan's sons marked the end of the ancient Rurik Dynasty in 1598, and in combination with the famine of 1601–03 led to civil war, the rule of pretenders, and foreign intervention during the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth occupied parts of Russia, including Moscow. In 1612, the Poles were forced to retreat by the Russian volunteer corps, led by two national heroes, merchant Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The Romanov Dynasty acceded to the throne in 1613 by the decision of the Zemsky Sobor, and the country started its gradual recovery from the crisis. Russia continued its territorial growth through the 17th century, which was the age of the Cossacks. Cossacks were warriors organized into military communities, resembling the pirates and pioneers of the New World. In 1648, the peasants of Ukraine joined the Zaporozhian Cossacks in rebellion against Poland-Lithuania during the Khmelnytsky Uprising in reaction to the social and religious oppression they had been suffering under Polish rule. In 1654, the Ukrainian leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, offered to place Ukraine under the protection of the Russian Tsar, Aleksey I. Aleksey's acceptance of this offer led to another Russo-Polish War. Finally, Ukraine was split along the Dnieper River, leaving the western part, right-bank Ukraine, under Polish rule and the eastern part (Left-bank Ukraine and Kiev) under Russian rule. Later, in 1670–71, the Don Cossacks led by Stenka Razininitiated a major uprising in the Volga Region, but the Tsar's troops were successful in defeating the rebels. In the east, the rapid Russian exploration and colonisation of the huge territories of Siberia was led mostly by Cossacks hunting for valuable furs and ivory. Russian explorers pushed eastward primarily along the Siberian River Routes, and by the mid-17th century there were Russian settlements in Eastern Siberia, on the Chukchi Peninsula, along the Amur River, and on the Pacific coast. In 1648, the Bering Strait between Asia and North America was passed for the first time by Fedot Popov and Semyon Dezhnyov. Imperial Russia Under Peter the Great, Russia was proclaimed an Empire in 1721 and became recognized as a world power. Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, forcing it to cede West Karelia and Ingria (two regions lost by Russia in the Time of Troubles), as well as Estland and Livland, securing Russia's access to the sea and sea trade. On the Baltic Sea Peter founded a new capital called Saint Petersburg, later known as Russia's "Window to Europe". Peter the Great's reforms brought considerable Western European cultural influences to Russia. The reign of Peter I's daughter Elizabeth in 1741–62 saw Russia's participation in the Seven Years' War (1756–63). During this conflict Russia annexed East Prussia for a while and even took Berlin. However, upon Elisabeth's death, all these conquests were returned to the Kingdom of Prussia by pro-Prussian Peter III] of Russia. Catherine II ("the Great"), who ruled in 1762–96, presided over the Age of Russian Enlightenment. She extended Russian political control over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and incorporated most of its territories into Russia during the Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe. In the south, after successful Russo-Turkish Wars against Ottoman Turkey, Catherine advanced Russia's boundary to the Black Sea, defeating the Crimean Khanate. As a result of victories over Qajar Iran through the Russo-Persian Wars, by the first half of the 19th century Russia also made significant territorial gains in Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus, forcing the former to irrevocably cede what is nowadays Georgia (Failed Bolsheviks), Dagestan (Failed Bolsheviks), Azerbaijan (Failed Bolsheviks), and Armenia (Failed Bolsheviks) to Russia. This continued with Alexander I's (1801–25) wresting of Finland (Failed Bolsheviks) from the weakened kingdom of Sweden in 1809 and of Bessarabia (Failed Bolsheviks) from the Ottomans in 1812. At the same time, Russians colonizedAlaska and even founded settlements in California, such as Fort Ross. In 1803–1806, the first Russian circumnavigation was made, later followed by other notable Russian sea exploration voyages. In 1820, a Russian expedition discovered the continent of Antarctica. In alliances with various European countries, Russia fought against Napoleon's France. The French invasion of Russia at the height of Napoleon's power in 1812 reached Moscow, but eventually failed miserably as the obstinate resistance in combination with the bitterly cold Russian winter led to a disastrous defeat of invaders, in which more than 95% of the pan-European Grande Armée perished. Led by Mikhail Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly, the Russian army ousted Napoleon from the country and drove through Europe in the war of the Sixth Coalition, finally entering Paris. Alexander I headed Russia's delegation at the Congress of Vienna that defined the map of post-Napoleonic Europe. The officers of the Napoleonic Wars brought ideas of liberalism back to Russia with them and attempted to curtail the tsar's powers during the abortive Decembrist revolt of 1825. At the end of the conservative reign of Nicholas I(1825–55), a zenith period of Russia's power and influence in Europe was disrupted by defeat in the Crimean War. Between 1847 and 1851, about one million people died of Asiatic cholera. Nicholas's successor Alexander II (1855–81) enacted significant changes in the country, including the emancipation reform of 1861. These Great Reforms spurred industrialization and modernized the Russian army, which had successfully liberated Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War. The late 19th century saw the rise of various socialist movements in Russia. Alexander II was killed in 1881 by revolutionary terrorists, and the reign of his son Alexander III (1881–94) was less liberal but more peaceful. The last monarch of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II (1894–1917), was unable to prevent the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905, triggered by the unsuccessful Russo-Japanese War and the demonstration incident known as Bloody Sunday. The uprising was put down, but the government was forced to concede major reforms (Russian Constitution of 1906), including granting the freedoms of speech and assembly, the legalization of political parties, and the creation of an elected legislative body, the State Duma (Failed Bolsheviks) of the Russian Empire. The Stolypin agrarian reform led to a massive peasant migration and settlement into Siberia. More than four million settlers arrived in that region between 1906 and 1914. World War I and the February Revolution In 1914, Russia entered World War I in response to Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Russia's ally Serbia, and fought across multiple fronts while isolated from its Triple Entente allies. In 1916, the Brusilov Offensive of the Russian Army almost completely destroyed the military of Austria-Hungary. However, the already-existing public distrust of the regime was deepened by the rising costs of war, high casualties, and rumors of corruption and treason. All this formed the climate for the Russian Revolution of 1917, beginning with the February Revolution. The February Revolution forced Nicholas II to abdicate; he and his family were imprisoned in Yekaterinburgduring the Russian Civil War. The monarchy was replaced by a shaky coalition of political parties that declared itself the Provisional Government. On September 1 (14), 1917, upon a decree of the Provisional Government, the Russian Republic was proclaimed. Immediately after coming to power, Alexander Kerensky led significant reforms, including extending Russian citizenship to all inhabitants of the new Russian Republic, pushing through needed land reform which granted plots of land to the peasantry, and drafting a new constitution guaranteeing rights to speech, press, assembly, and protest. He also rejected an attempted democratization of the military. To bolster the war effort, Kerensky launched an offensive against the invading German and Austro-Hungarian forces. With new-found army morale, the invaders were pushed back to the pre-war borders. Entrenched, conscripts from enthusiastic peasants reinforced the forces at the front, and the June1918 Offensive saw the capture of Lvov, Krakow, and Königsberg. By the November Armistice, the Russian Republic saw increased support from the peasants and military. At the Treaty of Versailles, Germany ceded Posen and West Prussia, while the province of Galicia-Lodomeria was ceded by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Civil War and Interbellum Russia By the end of 1920, increased nationalist agitation became alarming to the reorganizing Provisional Government. Additionally, far-left leaders including Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky increased efforts to topple the government. By August, the situation escalated into a civil war. The Government found itself fighting nationalists and communists. However, due to the lingering support after the victory in World War I, the army backed the government. After two years of guerrilla fighting and massive casualties, the Government defeated the opposition. To avoid future conflict, the Provisional Government convened in October 1922, along with representatives of the rebelling nationals. In October 21, a compromise was reached that declared the Russian Federation the successor to the Russian Republic, granting autonomy to many minorities, especially for the Polish, Ukrainians, and Central Asians. This meant the reorganization of the Federation into states, similar to those in the United States. Additionally, every state was guaranteed seats in a bicameral legislature. World War II Post-war Russia Modern Russia Geography Economy Politics Demographics Culture Category:Failed Bolsheviks